


Gestalt

by RainShadow07



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 04:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12073698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainShadow07/pseuds/RainShadow07
Summary: Their relationship, if anyone cared to look close enough, is about yes, when everyone else always told them no.





	Gestalt

gestalt, n. _a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts._ –merriam webster

 

They look at the two of them, Goren-n-Eames, and they see whatever they need to see to explain it to themselves. A wacko and the promising cop he dragged into the dirt with him? The two detectives that just don’t quite belong? Most of the time, she’s his shadow, his go-to girl, she makes his ideas light up, the focusing lens that catches all of his crazy thoughts, his babbling incoherence, and redirects it back to him in one shining stream of epiphany. To outsiders, it might seem that this is her purpose, she is the conduit for his prophecies from the beyond. But those people don’t know them at all. She’s a spitfire, solid steel to his fleshy wrappings, and he would be nothing, _nothing,_ without her.

Without Eames his brilliance gets lost in translation. She’s the right kind of radio station and that’s what they see. That she keeps him in line.

But, damn it, she can be so reckless, and part of what steadies her is being steady for him, and he knows it. She’s too busy making sure he doesn’t do something monumentally stupid that she has no time to do the same. He takes care of her, lets her wildness bleed through into him, except no one else can see this.

Their relationship, if anyone cared to look close enough, is about yes, when everyone else always told them no. A series of gratifications that were from the beginning, and never cease to be, completely intoxicating. After a lifetime of denying, a storybook full of no, it’s so seductive to finally have the world make sense. That maybe there’s a place for him, after all. For both of them.

Goren doesn’t know what they see. But to him it’s a kind of magic, human communication, a gestalt. Together they are stronger than the sum of their parts. So, he speaks for her on the job. He’s the captivating personality, and she backs him up with a few well-timed threats, demands, and glares that can, and have, made grown men weep.

But other times, Eames needs to be in control. And Goren understands that. It’s all about balance. That’s why Eames almost always drives. She confronts, and confronts, until something _hurts_ her. Then her voice gets crackly and choked up, and she hates that, and Goren hates seeing it. Then maybe their balance needs to be tipped, and Goren steps back, becomes the commanding, silent presence she needs him to be. It’s part of why they work so well together, because they just know what needs to be done to keep the balance between them.

That’s why Alex usually controls their sex. It’s on her terms because it has to be. And Bobby so desperately wants to please her, let her know how much she means to him, how much this matters—this, them, their brilliant gestalt mosaic. He wants nothing more, in those moments, than to completely submit himself to her, to let go. And for all his pretty words and fast talking, sex is the one time when Bobby will finally shut up… well, almost. He looks at her with wonder bordering on worship, and she reduces, regresses him to moans, babble, her name, and one other word.

“Please, please, _please_.”

Alex always says yes, yes, and yes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a therapist, and in grad school a professor talked about denial and gratification, and how to watch for seduction. How addicting is it, to finally be gratified after always being denied? Who would want to give it up?  
> Written in 2009.


End file.
